Benevolence is almost ready for her sea trial! VIDEO ATTACHED

Brett has spent the last few days hooking and priming the engine up so it's ready to try out. We tested it yesterday with the shifting gears. So far so good! Charl and Brett went through and watched it run for awhile today. Everything looks good. We have minor leaks but can easily be fixed down the road. We did discover that the prop is too big for our engine. When you have a bigger engine, it spins faster and so you need a smaller prop that will keep up with it. Our prop was for a small, slow engine so it has a bigger prop on it. This is a setback but we can do sea trials like it is for now. We'll need to replace the prop when we can afford to haul it out.

Today, I hauled out the sails in the storage and swept off the lizards and cockroaches. Unfortunately I unrolled the sails on the gravel and got my hands slapped. Sails should ALWAYS be unrolled in the grass. While unrolling the last one, I hit my leg with a metal ring on the sail as I was shaking it out. It didn't hurt too terribly bad but as I jogged around the sail, straightening it out, I brushed my leg where I had hit. There was a huge round thing under my jeans! I sat down on the ground and pulled up my pant leg. The bump was the size of a golf ball and growing! I raised my leg in the air and the swelling went down.

Later in the afternoon, Brett and I switched main sails as the one on the boat was ripped. I took off all the lights and decorations that we had painstakingly put up the stays. Definitely a worthy sacrifice to have to take them down to take the boat out! We ran the both sails up. They don't have great shape, we're not sure why. But they'll do the job. While working with the main, it popped out of a cleat and the boom came crashing down and swept my shoulder. It didn't hurt but if I'd been under the boom, it would have cracked my head. It really reminds us that such a big boat with big gear needs careful attentiveness.

Working with the heavy sails really wore me out today and hurt my hands, including a broken nail past the skin. It feels so good to be working with the boat again but it was also an eye opener for the safety measures and slow speed I need to change gears to.

Tonight, I'll be cleaning the inside so it's ready, too. We are hoping and praying to be able to take it out tomorrow! Weather is the only thing that will hold us back. The wind can't be blowing more than 10 knots and the water has to be higher than it is and no swells. So we'll see.....But we're pretty much ready to do this! Very exciting!

Below is a VIDEO that I shot of us working on the sails...